DEN05LA041 · Arctic Aircraft Company Inc S-1B2
Arctic Aircraft Company Inc S-1B2 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA041
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Arctic Aircraft Company Inc S-1B2
- Aircraft type
- Arctic S-1
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N78AT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS), Steamboat Spngs, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · climb to cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, used
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was on departure approximately 500 feet agl when the engine lost power. The pilot attempted a forced landing in a snow covered meadow. The airplane hit a fence, that was buried in the snow, and nosed over causing substantial damage. The pilot stated that during his engine run up, prior to departure, he conducted a carburetor heat check and noted no power changes indicating carburetor icing. He also stated that upon losing power, he immediately applied carburetor heat but it was ineffective. A post accident examination of the engine revealed a small amount of water in the carburetor. The routine weather report from Haden, Colorado, 16 nautical miles west of SBS, recorded the temperature as 27 degrees Fahrenheit (F) and the dew point as 16 degrees F. According to the carburetor icing chart, conditions were conducive for icing at glide and cruise power.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power due to carburetor icing. Contributing factors include the conditions conducive for carburetor icing, the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing, the inadequate preflight planning and decision making and the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA041
- Event ID
- 20041222X02026
- Case number
- DEN05LA041
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e9683000ef077aa9bd751e4e5a3acfe34650ed675b7ac13cc6780a8812490c62; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:25:33.378Z.